The present invention relates to information technologies and, more particularly, relates to systems and methods for prioritizing communications, such as e-mail and voice messages.
Communications and information technologies systems and processes are attracting significant attention and innovation. The many new developments and venues for communications and information transfers is increasingly becoming overwhelming in quantity of exchanges between communicators. E-mail and voice messages are typical examples.
With e-mail, so-called “spam” and other widely broadcast or unimportant and undesired information communications have become problematic. The typical recipient of e-mail must sift through numerous received messages of varying importance to the user. Prioritizing or otherwise segregating received e-mails presently requires that the user actively make determinations “on the fly” as each e-mail is viewed or read. The same is true with voice mail messages, which similarly accumulate and must each be listened to or otherwise segregated or discarded through the user's active involvement.
Various filters are being presently proposed and employed. For example, e-mail filters at the server computer may prevent certain e-mails from ever reaching the intended recipient. The filters are typically software that identify some word or characteristic of a message and systematically discard those messages, so they are never downloaded to the user. The filter software is presently typically maintained at the server computer.
The present quantity of communicated information, particularly on e-mails and voice messages, coupled with inadequacies of the present filtering mechanisms, particularly those maintained at the server of the information, are problematic. The intended recipient of the messages must actively sift through each message, prioritizing and discarding messages, as appropriate, through active involvement of the user in the process. Otherwise, software or other filters, which remove the required user involvement, arbitrarily discriminate between messages to discard and prioritize the messages, notwithstanding preferences or appropriateness of such filtering to the particular intended recipient. The intended recipient may, for example, want to receive certain messages that are being discarded or prioritized in an inappropriate manner for the particular recipient user. Alternately, the intended recipient may receive messages that the recipient does not want to receive.
Certain present filtering or differentiation mechanisms allow the recipient some degree of discretion in setting the discriminating characteristics. These present mechanisms, however, offer very limited flexibility, if any, to the recipient. In any event, although the recipient may have some discretion in setting the filter characteristics or other mechanisms for discriminating between messages, the recipient has little discretion once those characteristics are set. The intended recipient, thus, has little ability to change or vary priorities and discrimination characteristics “on the fly” in real time.
The present invention provides advantages of providing the intended recipient greater flexibility in prioritizing and discriminating among communicated information that is received. The advantages presented are significant to the technology and art.